"...how long does it take?"

One day ;-) Joking aside, when i started to learn it, it was a bit like this. I had to maintain a large CGI website. It was written in perl by someone with a C++/Java background who learned perl on the fly. He made everything "by hand". No modules a.s.o.

I made a local copy of the site, took my list of todo's, started reading the manuals and applied the changes to the local copy. When they worked, i put them online.

Don't ask about the code, but day by day it got a little bit better.

Let's say you want to learn french: in one hour or so you know how to say hello, to order a cup of coffee or how to buy a bread. Having some little conversation with the barmaid will take a little longer and reading and understanding a newspaper takes long. How long it takes depends on you. And you can't learn it only by books. You need to talk it.

Another example to illustrate this: You want to learn a musical instrument, let's say trumpet. Often asked question then: "How long does it take until i'm a musician?"

In my opinion this is a wrong approch and a wrong question. Doing any kind of things should been taken serious at any level of skills. In the moment you take your horn you are a musician.

The question better should have been: "When can i play in a band?"

And that just depends on you. Some reach this goal within some month, some need years and some give it up.

I hope that helps. Best regards, Karl